


a taste of nectar upon his lips

by Dragonslaeyr



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Hades!Richard, I don't condone Richard's actions, Persephone!Alex, but he loves her so much, but it can be read that way, not quite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19049038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonslaeyr/pseuds/Dragonslaeyr
Summary: The moment that those ruby lips touched the red flesh of the fruit, she was done for. But so was he.





	a taste of nectar upon his lips

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie, it's kind of weird to write mythology with the names Richard and Alex, but I tried to blend them as best as I could. Also, in my humble opinion, this is best read when listening to the Hadestown soundtrack. At least, that's what I wrote it to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _Tell me that you weren’t hungry that day.  
>  __Tell me that’s not what got you to stay._  
>    
>  \- **From Hades to Persephone** , Lee Ann Schaffer

☾

Richard was damned, but that was his lot in life. To be damned was his choice—or at least, it would have been, had his brothers not cheated. But he ruled over his dominion with fairness and a just, but firm hand.

If only there were someone to rule alongside him.

☾ 

She was beautiful in golden silks, spun from only the best of threads—undoubtedly a gift from her mother, and the paper-thin embroidery that ran up the length of her body curled and twisted around her curves and blossomed into tiny flowers and leafy vines, each one a sharp, pointed reminder to him that she was not of his world. Her hair was woven through with tiny white and blue flowers, and her eyes were as wide and green as the lush vegetation that seemed to lean into her touch. He wanted, oh, how he _wanted_ her as he watched from his liminal space between worlds. Once, perhaps, he would have wooed her, loved her, crossed the threshold between his kingdom and the cradle above; but such chivalry was fruitless (and oh, but wasn't that the _perfect_ word). 

After the war there was no such thing as heroes, and had there been, he would never have been mistaken for one. 

☾

And so he took.

The ground burst like a thunderwave, shaking the foundations of the world, and shadows poured from the break like tendrils, grasping and pulling at the light. He rode his lone horse through the path that carved itself like a sickly vein towards her, ignoring the trees and plants which shriveled and died around him as he rode. He came upon her quickly, with barely a whisper, and when she spun around to see what was happening, he pulled her from her garden and dragged her down. 

☾

She refused to speak to him for three days and three nights. Richard plied her with the freshest of spring water and the finest of foods, leaning against the tangled mass of branches and thorny roots that wove together to keep her in, but she wouldn't budge. 

The cage—for it was a cage, he had no delusions about what he had built—had been his attempt at a tree. For her, he would grow an enormous white oak that would tower above the grinding, grimy world below, reaching far into the endless dark night sky above. Except that he was no god of nature, but rather one of death, and he knew not how to coax love from the earth or from a goddess's heart. He had spun the tree roots like silk from his hands, but the threads had frayed and roughened at his call, cracking and shifting and knotting and bursting with twisted movements. What had once been a tree now curled into a mass of tangles, a cage fit for a queen.

He pressed his hand to it, and whispered an apology. He had never been good at growing things.

☾

When she first spoke to him, it was through cracked lips and a dry throat.

"Who are you?"

He scrambled to his feet, pressing against a gap in the branches, and saw hollow green eyes looking back.

"You don't know?"

Silence.

"You can call me Richard. And you?"

She said nothing. He stared back at her, but she melted into the darkness, leaving only the faint smell of flowers, immediately smothered by the crush of rot and decay.

☾

"Where am I?"

Now he was sitting, leaning back against the pricking branches, and the voice came from lips that whispered beside his ear, the stillness of the moment breaking with her breath.

"Under the world," he breathed, almost not daring to look back. He tipped his head to the side and caught the faintest glimpse of shifting gold in the darkness, a hint of roses eclipsed by smoke from the forges below.

"And what would you have me do?" Her voice was even, gentle, without blame.

"Grant me the gift of your heart," he pleaded. "For mine is breaking with each passing moment."

"I thought the King of Death was without a heart," she spoke with flint and fire, and he saw the fiery darkness in her eyes. Or perhaps that was his own reflection.

"He was," Richard's voice cracked. "Until now."

She slipped back into the shadows and he watched his heart go with her.

☾

"Am I trapped here?"

By now he was used to her words from the darkness. She had a penchant for questions and a thirst for knowledge, and he knew he was the only one who could sate her.

"I would have you stay willingly."

"Willingly within a cage?"

"Willingly at my side."

He heard her pull at the branches, futile soft hands against the might of a king. "Please, let me out."

"How... How can I know you won't leave me?" He did not hide his emotion behind false words or secret looks. He had not become King of the Underworld just to hide in the shadows. No, he would move Olympus itself for her and her affection, and now that he had her in his grasp, he could not let her leave.

"You love me, do you not?" Her words were bitter as the earth from which her cage had sprang. "Can you not trust me?"

"I fear I am unable to be logical when it comes to you."

She sighed then, and the sound was so impossibly sad, so deeply heartrending that he pressed his forehead to the tree, clutching at it with his hands uselessly, letting the thorns dig into the skin, just deep enough for crimson drops of blood to well against ashen skin. He felt her touch, light and  exploratory across the lines of his face, the pads of her fingers dancing across what little parts of him she could find through the tangle of vines and wood, and he let himself fall to pieces there, beneath the world.

"You may call me Alex," she said, as the ghost of a thumbprint fluttered against his cheek, and he continued to stand in place until he felt everything stop spinning.

☾

Above, the skies swirled with sleet and snow, but below, they remained untouched in their own world.

☾

"Why me?" 

He almost missed her words. They were soft, barely louder than the lapping of the river water against the shore, and even after hearing them, he was unsure of how to respond. 

"Look up," he said, finally, and heard the soft rustle of Alex's body as she leaned against the same spot where he was. They were back to back, separated only by the tree that kept her from him—or was it the other way around? 

"I see nothing."

"Then you aren't looking enough," he chided gently. "We do not have constellations as they do above. Instead, only the light of fires and gemstones. Do you see them? Rubies, as red as blood and flame. Onyx as dark and crystalline as the wing of a raven, and of course, diamonds as sharp as a knife, yet beautiful as a star cut from the sky itself."

"I'm afraid, my king, I see only pretty rocks."

"They are that, of course. But they also brought me here. My brothers and I, we drew lots for what realms we would command. I drew a ruby, of course, to represent the plane over which I now rule."

"And you were not upset at this? I heard your brothers peered into the helm and chose their lots while you went on chance."

"How could I be upset? I remained faithful to my promise," Richard reached up, curling his fingers between branches—were they thinning? Had he let them?—and wishing he did not have to beg for her touch. "And my actions led me to you."

"You chose your own fate, my king," her words were sharp and cutting, but he left his hand in place and felt small, shaky fingers curl over his own. 

For the first time, he almost felt whole.

☾

Their solitude did not last.

Richard noticed it first in the frost which formed at the edges of Alex's cage. The cage itself had begun to crack and bend, it's edges softening with mold, dissolving back into the earth from which it came. Yet, when he saw the frost forming, he felt suspicion curl darkly in the pit of his stomach, and merely built a fire for Alex to warm her body against. And if it illuminated her more, allowing him to see the way her gold dress—now slick with dirt and dust, yet no less radiant—clung to her body and shimmered in the light, well. He wasn't a fearful man, but even he wouldn't have dared say as much to her.

The forges began to prove harder and harder to keep alight, and in the last sign of the coming storm, he swore one day that he saw the white winged foot of the messenger god, flitting away from him with a great secret that he had never hoped to keep.

The storm came soon after, a swirl of ice and snow, of sleeting hail and wind that whipped through his domain and snuffed out the lights. Richard had raced to Alex's side, dissolving the cage at the very moment that the wind had picked up, and when her mother descended before him, he had stood before Alex, holding her behind him without a second thought.

"I searched the world for you," Demeter had snarled, and he had said nothing in return. "She does not belong here, with you."

"I would not have her belong to anyone," Richard replied, and the lie turned to ash in his mouth.

"Then let her choose where she wishes to go."

At that, he had turned, and among the whipping winds and biting cold, he had truly looked into her eyes for the first time. They were the same lush green, the same luminescence that he had caught a glimpse of above ground on that fateful day. The brightness that promised to be his light amongst all of this dark. 

"I would not have you leave me," he choked out, his hand cupping her cheek. She leaned into the touch, pressing her own hand over his, and her smile was sad. "There is great darkness here with me, but with you, I see only that which I have missed most of the world above."

"You must know that is why I have to return to it." Her face was no longer darkened by the anger that once burned at the mere sight of him, yet her words fell like weights pulling him down, down, down.

"Would you—I mean... please, if you are to leave, let me give you one thing." And he drew from his cloak a single pomegranate. It was red as the rubies that glittered above them, the blood that welled at his fingers when she had touched them, her lips as Alex smiled up at him.

"It is the perfect gift for the goddess of growing things," she said then, and her hands, still shaking with exhaustion, broke the fruit in two; and her lips, cracked and dry from thirst, pressed to the flesh of the fruit and drank in its sweet nectar.

And her teeth, white as the snow that drifted around them, smiled up at him as he leaned in to kiss her.

For she was here now, and here she must stay.

**Author's Note:**

> The white oak is actually the state tree of Illinois, where Strand's based out of in canon! Also the story of how Hades got the Underworld is true: the three brothers drew for it, but Zeus and Hades both cheated and picked out what they wanted. Supposedly Hades also wanted his lot, but he was too moral to cheat for it. I like to think that says a lot about Stand as well.


End file.
